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Cuomo’s Teachout Challenge Tossed, Stage Set for Sept. Primary

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign struck out for the second time in successive weeks as it tried, but failed, to knock Democratic primary challenger Zephyr Teachout off the ballot, unsuccessfully arguing that she hasn’t lived in New York State long enough to run for governor.

A state appellate court unanimously ruled Wednesday in favor of Teachout, who was also victorious last week when a lower court shot down Cuomo’s residency challenge.

“Although Zephyr R. Teachout has resided in several different residences within the City of New York since 2009, while maintaining close connections to her childhood [home] of Vermont, that is nothing more than an ambiguity in the residency calculus,” the four-judge panel hearing the case wrote in their decision. “The burden in this proceeding is not on Teachout to establish residency, but rather, upon the petitioners to establish by clear and convincing evidence that she does not meet the residency requirements” established by the state constitution.

“The Supreme Court’s determination that the petitioners failed to meet their burden of demonstrating that Teachout did not meet the constitutional residency requirements for the office of governor is warranted by the facts,” the judges added.

After the ruling, Teachout’s campaign sent an email to supporters in which it called Cuomo’s lawsuit “frivolous” and highlighted several issues that Teachout has used to fire up her supporters: schools, fracking—a hot button issue that Cuomo failed to address during his first term—and what the campaign called “Cuomo’s abuse of power in Albany,” a not-so-subtle jab at the governor, whose office is facing allegations of interfering with the Moreland Commission that he tasked with investigating political corruption before he unceremoniously disbanded it in March.

The stage is now set for a Sept. 9 primary between Cuomo, who is armed with a more than $30 million war chest and is still viewed favorably by a majority of New Yorkers, and Teachout, a Fordham Law School professor with a strong following among progressives but still largely unknown by many voters in the state.

Teachout appears emboldened by Cuomo’s attempt to push her off the primary ballot. Her campaign was also buoyed by an endorsement from the New York State Public Employees Federation, the second-largest employee union in the state. Earlier this month she also got the nod from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has failed to push his Democratic primary challenger Zephyr Teachout off the ballot.

Teachout isn’t all Cuomo needs to worry about, however. A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday which revealed that 48 percent of voters believe Cuomo is part of the state’s “corruption problem.”

Those same voters, though, appear conflicted. Fifty-percent disapprove of how Cuomo has handled ethics in state government, but the same percentage of voters also find him honest and trustworthy.

Despite recent efforts to improve her visibility, Teachout is still a relative unknown, according to the poll, which found that 88 percent of voters don’t know enough about her.

Maurice Carroll, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said of Teachout: she’s “about as anonymous as a candidate can be.”

Rashed Mian has been covering local news for the Long Island Press since 2011. He graduated from Hofstra University in 2010 where he studied print journalism. Rashed, the staff's multimedia reporter, covers daily news for the web, shoots/edits feature videos and writes about civil liberties. He loves Afghan food and sports. Rashed is also a caffeine freak. Email: rmian@longislandpress.com. Twitter: rashedmian